The new series on the history of what we wore, Knitting Patterns, 1930-1970
Now these I like. They come from a series entitled
With Charm...... Patterns with Style and for me perfectly capture a sense of the last world war.
Toy factories had closed down and been redirected to make war materials and with everything in short supply, the use of left over wool to make children’s Christmas presents made sense..
That war like the one before it was all pervasive, from saying goodbye to a loved one, waiting for the sound of the air raid siren or just balancing the demands of the family’s needs against the limitations of rationing.
And one of observation that has always stayed with me is that simple one that “
almost everyone you met was in uniform”.
I am now not quite sure where I first came across it and I suspect it was in the excellent short essay Post War by Diana Athill, which is a particularly good reason to re-read it.*
It covers the years after the Second World War when Ms Athill was in her late 20s and challenges that widely held view that the late 1940s and early 50s were drab.
On the contrary they were an exciting period full of new possibilities but above all a time of peace after six years of a hard war.
And so reflecting on the twin celebrations of VE and VJ Day she writes that these were not just celebrations of victory but more of peace and the chance to get on with lives interrupted by the conflict.
My own parents rarely talked of the war but for them and for others of their generation however necessary they thought the war might have been it put their lives on hold.
Sylvia in Ashton under Lyne once confided that those six years had robbed her of her adolescence.
But the essay is about far more than just the war and ranges over the exciting new ideas in fashion, home design and leisure, culminating with one of the early package tours to Corfu with Club Mediterranean, taking in the brilliant sunlight, the scenery and the smells of fresh herbs and lemons.
All this would be a fascinating enough but she also focuses on the changing political climate which ushered in not only the National Health Service but saw Britain divest itself of many of its former colonies and attempt to redress the inequalities of the past.
These then were
“lovely years to live through.”*
And I suspect those knitting patterns lingered on into that lovely peace and as rationing continued it remained a case of how ever optimistic the future seemed, the present was still about make and mend.
Location; 1939-45
Pictures;
knitting patterns 1939-45 from the collection of Jillian Simpson
*Athill Diana, Post War, from a collection of essays in Alive, Alive, Oh!, 2015
